Two Louisiana elected officials, both Republicans, have demonstrated starkly contrasting examples of responsible leadership this week.

First, the good news about an elected official doing the right thing.

Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler staunchly refused a request from the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to provide it with highly personal information about Louisiana voters, including social security numbers, birth dates, and certain family history.

The commission was formed by President Frump in investigate what he claims was fraud in the presidential elections last November. Could anything have been so inappropriately named? It’s like calling the KKK a commission on human dignity and equal rights.

President Grump seems to think that widespread voter fraud prevented him from winning the popular vote. That claim seems a tad far-fetched, given the fact he lost the popular vote by about three million. Next thing you know, the Trumper will be trying to convince us that pro wrestling is real.

About two dozen states have refused outright to provide such information and another 20 or so have either not made a decision or only partially complied with the request.

Mark Ballard, writing in the Baton Rouge ADVOCATE, quoted Schedler as saying, “The President’s Commission has quickly politicized its work by asking states for an incredible amount of voter data that I have, time and time again, refused to release. My response to the Commission is, you’re not going to play politics with Louisiana’s voter data, and if you are, then you can purchase the limited public information available by law, to any candidate running for office. That’s it.”

Louisiana’s public voter list, Ballard wrote, includes only names, addresses, party affiliation and voter history. Voter history only indicates whether or not people participated in previous elections but not how they voted.

Schedler deserves credit for making the decision to comply with state law instead of trying to see if he could circumvent the law and cater to the wishes of a president who seems to have taken a ride on the Disoriented Express and checked into the Hotel Silly.

Too bad the same can’t be said of U.S. Rep. Clay (Barney Fife) Higgins, that rootin’-tootin’, gun-wavin’ former deputy (as in public information officer) sheriff who once threatened to single-handedly take out all the drug lords of St. Landry Parish only to wind up being forced to resign by an embarrassed sheriff.

Higgins somehow managed to get himself elected as something of a wannabe Trumpette and now the good folks of the Third District are saddled with him for the next 18 months. Surely, common sense will prevail and he will be denied a second term—unless, of course, they feel sorry for him and want to keep him in office until his $200,000 in delinquent child support payments are caught up.

In the meantime, he has advocated murdering all radical Islamics, radical being a relative term most likely applicable to all Islamics in Higgins’ demented mindset.

And now, this ignorant ass-clown has tried to turn a visit to the AUSCHWITZ MEMORIAL into some kind of personal political statement in violation of posted plaques that requested respectful “mournful” silence inside the most infamous concentration camp where more than a million Jews were gassed by Nazis during World War II.

Higgins posted a video on YouTube in which he walks through different areas of the Poland camp, explaining that it took only about 20 minutes to kill the Jews inside the gas chambers. “This is why Homeland Security must be squared away, why our military must be invincible,” he said on the video.

“The world’s a smaller place now than it was in World War II,” Higgins said. “The United States is more accessible to terror like this, horror like this. It’s hard to walk away from gas chambers, ovens without a very sober feeling of commitment, unwavering commitment, to make damn sure that the United States of America is protected from the evils of the world.”

The Auschwitz Memorial tweeted, “Everyone has the right to personal reflections. However, inside a former gas chamber, there should be mournful silence. It’s not a stage.”

Well, the folks at the Auschwitz Memorial need to quit wasting their time with tweets about Higgins’ lack of decorum. They have to realize that this is the country that gave the world Donald Trump and Louisiana is the state that gave the U.S. Congress Clay Higgins.

Dignity and decorum are passe to these two. You could throw both into a sack, shake it up and the only way you could tell the difference between the two when you poured them out would be the orange hair and a money clip.

Trump is an insufferable egomaniac and we may as well accept that fact. Higgins is an insufferable buffoon and we may as well accept that fact.

Higgins has been in office just a tad more than six months and he’s already making transcontinental junkets.

A mere six months in office seems a little soon for him to be taking one of those “fact-finding” trips for which members of Congress are famous.

So what I’d really like to know is this:

What was he doing in Poland?

Was he on official business?

If so, what was the nature of that business?

Or was part of the official support group for the Tweeter in Chief’s Poland trip?

Did U.S. taxpayers pay for that trip or did he receive a free trip from some campaign supporter or lobbyist?

Or perhaps he was just hot on the trail of a St. Landry Parish drug lord.

From the video itself it sure looked like Higgins knew he was doing something he should not have been. And yeah, I’d like to know if that trip was one of the infamous “junkets” our congress critters love to take.

The recording of Grump’s speech/rally in Poland yesterday, with the audience loudly chanting his name, proves they are as desperate for salvation from the ills of the world as the people who still support him here. One would think the Polish people would remember another like him, particularly those who are Jewish and whose forebearers’ fates were used by Deputy Dawg in a message the meaning and purpose of which still escape me..

Rep Higgins, another politician in a long line of LA politicians that continue to embarrass the state (re Jindal?). LA is the butt of jokes and derisive statements among my friends who live out of state; somehow, they don’t understand. However, LA does not have a monopoly on ignorance, grandstanding and idiocy..it has raised to the level of the White House. Higgins will be reelected by the good folks of the Third Congressional District unless he is caught in bed with a boy or a dead body, anything else will be forgiven…a Trump clone.

Mr. Winham, is it necessary for you to demonize those with whom you disagree with to make your point? “…another like him…”???????

I would respectfully suggest that, no matter your apparent personal distaste for him, you may want, after really thinking about it, to get behind him and support him with things like the North Korea danger and menace, left to him after eight years of a failing/do-nothing policy called “strategic patience.”

I do see certain characteristics of the dictator in our current President, but I certainly don’t mean to say he is a clone of the dictator-in-question. As you imply, I did allow my view of him, as a person, to intrude, and should have said something like, “with whom he shares certain characteristics.”

I would like nothing better than to believe our President can actually become a respected leader and unite our country, but I have a real problem being optimistic about it. I clearly view him differently than you and believe he has to deserve the support of the country, not simply expect fealty. If patriotism is defined as blind allegiance, I guess we should all still be colonists.

What, precisely, would you have the President do to handle the North Korean problem? Better yet, what do you believe he is actually doing? Are you aware of how his star cabinet member (and a person we should all be grateful for) Rex Tillerson, believes we should handle it? I think his position might be close to the “strategic patience” you seem to find so reprehensible. How about Defense Secretary Mattis? How does he believe we should handle this? How do you believe President Obama mishandled it?

Couldn’t disagree more Tom. There have been too many instances of Democrats and the affiliate voter registration groups, committing fraud and registering dead people to vote, pushing for felons to vote, and generally, trying to register illegal aliens just as fast as they can to vote, for you to dismiss their claim as baseless. The real story is that those states are afraid to compare voter rolls to SS rolls because we all know there is fraud and all other objections, a sham. If it weren’t, they’d suggest redacting their SS numbers or simply answering Y or N and comparing their info themselves. But we know they aren’t. It’s sad, it’s bad for our country, and it’s a shame that they are “made fun of” and called bigots for not wanting to pay for unlimited entitlements to foreigners who flood our borders and wish to jump ahead of those immigrants who follow the law. Just exactly how much $$ do we have to afford to pay for unlimited numbers of illegal aliens flooding our border? If you can’t answer that question, then you can’t claim people are bigots for not wanting to pay for that nor agree to it.

Brandon, I will agree that there is some voter fraud, but compared to the number of legal voting, such fraud does not impact our elections one way or the other. In all complicated systems there will be some fraud. Food stamp fraud and Medicaid fraud are two prime examples. But, you do not speak out about Medicaid billing fraud. How many of those illegal aliens or dead voters are over billing the system? None. You all are concerned about voter fraud! You should be more concerned about the FACT that a foreign country meddled in our elections. The meddling did not affect the outcome, but there still must be some concerns among republicans and democrats, alike. It seems as though you all are trying to get the people’s attention away from the Russian meddling. By the way, our voter-fraud election system must still work, Trump was still elected president.

Without the side-statements about the President, Schedler is right and Higgins is wrong. You don’t have to believe that there’s no voter fraud to think that the federal government has no business in Louisiana voter data. None at all. If there is fraud, then report it – pure and simple. As long as there are Dems and Reps there will be voter fraud. If you want to ban voter fraud, get rid of the corrupt parties (all of them) that promulgate it. Easy. Don’t even take a US Commission.

Great article Tom. Higgins and Johnson(Fleming’s replacement) are opposite sides of the same Trump coin. Without being “Easy”, Mr. Rogers should understand that the federal government is “us” and the right to vote is somewhere in the US Constitution and thus it would be very difficult to “ban” voter fraud, unless of course you are a Trump/Putin. love always ron thompson

I moved away for 6 years and recently found out I was registered to vote in 2 states simultaneously . I have no idea if anyone voted or used my name in my absence. But there’s a problem. Anyone that doesn’t want fraud eliminated from the election process is disingenuous.

The last voter fraud I saw reported was in the Saturday Baton Rouge ADVOCATE and it was about a woman who attempted to vote twice for TRUMP, but was caught. I figure, as do most state elections officials, that, to the extent our voting system is flawed, it is indiscriminate in its effect, I think President Trump’s contention that 3 million people voted illegally in the last election ridiculous – but even if it is possible, I would guess at least half of them voted for him.

No system of any kind is perfect. You are absolutely right, though – anybody who doesn’t want everything possible done to detect flaws in the system is disingenuous or, perhaps a better term might be stupid. Building the kind of database the commission in question is trying to build is clearly not the answer and the ways it could be abused are more than obvious.

Voter fraud is rare and exaggerated. However the number of people who do not vote is large and authentic. Perhaps if voter turnout was increased we could be more proactive with our country’s issues. Instead of reacting to the world, we could go back to being true leaders again. Trump is an embarrassment. He may be some people’s idea of a leader but he reminds me of every bully, abusive and dishonest paranoid immature white male I have ever had the misfortune to cross paths with. To have someone stand up to him is cause for hope. Hope that the good men and women in power in our nation will stand up to him, and his camp followers, and just say enough is enough.

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